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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30069345">Why are you weeping, Makalaurë?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/protisvit/pseuds/protisvit'>protisvit</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works &amp; Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Because it's the Silmarillion, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Childhood Memories, Family, Flashbacks, Fëanorian Week 2021, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Introspection, Maglor Wandering, Maglor isn't doing so well and can you blame him, the thin line between memories and reality, though I only realised that after writing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 18:33:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,030</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30069345</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/protisvit/pseuds/protisvit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Maglor walks the shore alone. His brothers walk with him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>55</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Why are you weeping, Makalaurë?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The sun was hidden from the sea that day and the rough waves had turned murky grey in a perfect mirror image of the dull clouds overhead, both divided only by an endless pale horizon.All around, the colours had disappeared from the earth and Maglor wondered, if perhaps <em>this</em> was what the void looked like. An endless space devoid of colour, sound and feel. An endless nothingness to isolate one from one’s own existence and drive one mad.</p><p>It was a far more frightening thought than any darkness or torture. </p><p><em>Is that what my brothers feel?</em> he asked the only person still listening.</p><p><em>Does it matter? </em>he answered his own question. He would never join them now, it had been much too long since he had failed to follow his brother’s example and throw the Silmaril into the waves with his body still attached to it. Too many years of wandering and suffering had passed, that had made his next step and the next note of his lament as unescapable as the passing of the hours and years. He had woven the mourning resonance of the Noldolantë into the music of Arda itself and himself with it.</p><p>Even if he did not care if he lived, he had been surviving for so long he thought he might not know how to die anymore.</p><p> </p><p>The coarse sand and stones were biting into the soles of his bare feet as he walked, having long since discarded his worn through boots. Now the quiet crunch of his steps in the sand formed an imperfect metronome for his song.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“I fixed it.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Curufinwë stands before him, hands outstretched and in them a little box, ticking away with the steadiness of his own heart beat.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“It was easy, Atar did not even have to show me how. Now you must not be cross with me anymore.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Again his feet lost their rhythm, one sinking a little deeper into a puddle of water that had been hidden under the wet sand. Around his foot he could feel the pull of the waves towards the sea, dragging the sand with them and hollowing out the ground he stood upon. He stepped aside instinctively, onto a sharp shell that cut through his skin.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Careful, Laurë!” Maitimo calls and the white towers of Alqualondë glitter behind him, shining with the colours of the Mother of Pearl fragments inlaid in their walls.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Let me see that. Where was that head of yours again?”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He picked up the shell. Its hard, curved form was broken and the white edges ragged, now tinted pink with his blood.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Káno, look what I found!” A smudge of silver races towards him, so fast, that his light hair whipping behind him in the wind blends into the pale morning light around him. When Tyelkormo opens his small hands they reveal a cone shell and, emerging from it, the scarlet claws of a hermit crab. “Can we please take him home with us?”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He thought his hair might be turning pale too. Grey, like that of the Edain, when their spirits and bodies started to wane after long years of sorrow and grief. His skin seemed grey as well, and sometimes he thought it was because he could see the grey sky through it. Perhaps he was just becoming a part of that greyness around him, fading into a lament on the waves, his song lost under the cry of the gulls and raging of the sea. Another gull flew over his head, so close this time that he could feel the gust of wind from its wings in his hair.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>A shrill scream comes from the other side of the beach, followed by a bought of laughter.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You sound like the gulls, Moryo!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A dark haired elfling’s face is turning an impressive shade of red as he scowls at his brother. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I do not!” he cries and crosses his thin arms, but when his indignation shows no effect, he quickly ducks down and picks up a handful of wet sand, hurling it towards his still laughing brother.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Stop laughing at me, Tyelko!” he insists and the blonde’s face immediately turns grave, as he bends down in an exaggeratedly somber manner to pick up his own lump of sand.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“If this is how you want to play…” he says, and the scene quickly dissolves into childish screams of laughter.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Little wet droplets were running down Maglor’s cheeks. <em>Ah</em>, he thought, <em>it must be raining.</em></p><p> </p><p>There was an opening in the high basalt cliffs, nothing more than a crack in the dark structure looming over him, a comfortable shelter for a child perhaps, but not enough to hide a grown adult. He walked past and let his scarred hand trace the stone. It was as rough and blackened as his own scorched skin and its sharp edges seemed detached from under his unfeeling finger.</p><p>The wind blew sharper now and the dark strands of his dirty hair tangled before his eyes, obscuring his sight. He listened instead to the desperate howling of the wind trapped in the small cracks and hollows of unmoving stone.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Two red-haired children cling to him, the vibrant colour of their hair burning with the curb’s fire behind them and their identical faces are flushed with excitement and the only recently abandoned heat of the flames.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Tell us a story Káno! About why the wind howls so. Does it sing like you do? What does it sing about?”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>His hair was whipped away from his eyes again by another violent gust of wind, but the darkness stubbornly remained. Was it night already? There were no stars he could distinguish, not even in the West was his father’s creation visible to the hopeful eye. He clenched his hand and walked on, the howl of the wind lost beneath his own.</p><p>He walked until the path before him rose away from the soft sand and up on uneven stone, crumbling away under his feet as he climbed, the small pebbles falling endlessly into the abyss beside him. He would not sleep, only set one step after the other until he would drop from exertion, too exhausted for even dreams to find him, may they be horrible- or worse- good.</p><p>He stumbled.</p><p>There was a bird at his feet, the white feathers making it visible to him even in the night- no, that was the dawn breaking over the horizon.</p><p>One of the creature’s wings was twisted and its neck broken, overstretched into an unnatural position on the ground, his honey coloured beak turned away from its body as if pointing out the way ahead.</p><p><em>Did the storm do this to you? </em>he asked, but the dark eyes gave no answer.</p><p> </p><p><em>He touches the impossibly soft feathers with a trembling hand and suddenly, for the first time since he has been born into these immortal lands of Aman, he understands that even here nothing lasts forever. He thinks of his grandmother, lying as beautiful and lifeless as this little bird while his father strokes her soft hair. The bird must have a mother too, or little nestlings screaming for it, and if it doesn’t, how lonely it must have been. </em> <em>Perhaps it is a silly thing to anguish about, but he has a vivid imagination and a soft heart and has never seen death before.</em></p><p>
  <em>Through his tears he sees his father hurrying from his forge, alarmed by his young son’s despairing wails.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“What is it, Makalaurë? What has happened? Are you hurt?” his father’s face is tight and pale and his hands are running over his child’s small form, trying to find the cause of his hurt, to fix it as he always does. “Please, tell me why you are weeping,” he asks again and spots the lifeless bird in the same moment. His shoulders drop in relief and his features relax into a sad smile as he pulls his sobbing son into a tight embrace. “It is alright ‘Laurë,” he whispers to him. “Everything has its time.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He turned away from the bird and walked on as the sun rose higher into the clear, blue sky.</p><p><em>His father,</em> who then had been so much younger than he must be by now, and so anxious about any sadness befalling his newly formed family.</p><p>Maitimo had been an easy child in that regard, and really in any other regard as well. Happy and content, with the sure confidence of someone who had grown up with all of his parent’s praise and attention and who, deep down, believed he deserved it. Kind and courteous to everyone and widely loved- and later admired- in return. When he had been quiet, it had been with thoughtful consideration or the comfort that needed no words. Maitimo had never been despairing.</p><p>He himself however, befitting the poet he would become, had been much more volatile. His joy had been delightfully loud but his sorrow even louder. How unsettling these first fits of despair must have been for his father, who had always lived under the shadow of his mother’s fate.</p><p>His brothers had shed tears too, of course, but they were easily quietened. Tyelko had cried in pain after falling out of a tree and Moryo often in anger. Curvo had sometimes teared up in frustration and the Ambarussa had sobbed in fear the first time they had heard the tale of their father’s mother and discovered that there might be a force in this world that could separate them after all. But Maitimo…</p><p>The hard stone under his feet had softened into dry earth and the narrow path was being overtaken by yellow and green patches of grass and finally a thick carpet of heather, the sea of small green leaves parted by spots of rose and purple flowers. A twig snapped underneath his weary feet.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>The air is filled with the fragrance of blooming petals as he wanders through the labyrinth of thick green hedges and thorny bushes heavy with blossoms of every colour. Even now, thirsty and irritated as he is, he marvels at the beauty of it all, his parched throat aching to burst into a verse of song in celebration. Yet first he needs to find his brother, as his father had sent him out to do hours ago. But today Maitimo seems to have disappeared from the face of Arda entirely and his grandfather’s rose garden is his last hope. There is a spot there his brother had shown him when he had been but a little boy- his secret hiding place he had called it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He ducks under the low branches of a young tree and carefully pushes away some of the dense shrubbery before he stills. </em>
</p><p><em>He hears their laughter before he sees them, sitting in the grass, a bottle of what must be grandfather’s good wine lying forgotten next to them.</em> <em>They are leaning against each other and speaking in hushed, excited tones, and suddenly his brother is throwing his head back and is laughing, laughing until there are tears running down his cheeks and he has to gasp for breath. He is still holding onto Findekáno’s arm as his giggling cousin wipes away his tears of mirth.</em></p><p>
  <em>Quietly he turns away and leaves, reporting to their father that Maitimo is nowhere to be found.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The sun was high in the deep blue sky and the sea glittered faintly beneath it.</p><p>Maglor’s path lead him down again, away from the heather, towards the waves where the smell of salt perpetuated the air he still breathed. He did not hear the gulls anymore and the light breeze that seemed to caress his cheek was too weak to drown out his lament.</p><p>When his feet sank into soft sand again, the sun was already setting and suddenly the sky was set aflame in the same shade of red he had loved and hated and grieved more than anything else.</p><p>And again he walked on. Was it raining again?</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>And when Maglor walks the shore alone, his brothers walk with him, and on the wind his father’s voice whispers: “Why are you weeping, Makalaurë?”</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>That was today's episode of "I made myself sad". Hope you enjoyed.</p><p>Every Kudo and comment makes Mags (and me) a little bit happier! :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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